Hello, my name is Zachary Tobias, and I am a Public Relations major. I have recently started my new Journey here at SIUE! I was involved in the 2023 Summer Sucess Program which was six weeks of taking a few courses here, so I’ve been around on the campus a bit longer than the traditional student. In that program we got the opportunity to learn the campus, not only to find our summer classes but know where our classes were at before school started in the fall. This gave me not only a head start to the college experience and the possibility of graduating on time or early, but to meet new people and network. In the program I took a biology and a college finance class. My six-week program what seemed long at first went by so fast. At the end of the program, we had a little ceremony, and we received a certificate of completion (make sure to insert photo). For me that was a milestone for getting my first ever certificate from SIUE.
When I received my schedule for the fall semester, I was really excited to take Computer Concepts & Applicants (CMIS) which is a class I needed to take as a part of my major. As with almost anything you in in life including in the business field you have to give presentations or do projects by yourself and as a team. In my CMIS class this fall we had multiple exams and assessments and even group work. One particular project that I worked on in that class was a Data Visualization PowerPoint. Data Visualization is just what it sounds like, data transformed from excel sheet with numbers into a PowerPoint with graphs. We used a software system called Power Bi which lets you connect data sources you might have from an Excel spreadsheet into charts and graphs you can customize based on what type of information you’re trying to present. Knowing the knowledge, I do now and have taken that class, gives me an insight as to what I could expect in the business world when working with certain data for a company and transforming it into a presentation visually to present to people.
Second Semester of college and even CODES has taught me many things. While I recently made the transition from Business economics major to Public Relations, I am starting to see how college progresses as well as classes get harder by the semester not just year unlike back in high school. Finding my Nitch seeing that I have great speaking skills and presentation skills I decided that Public Relations might be for me. I have also learned that sometimes it is not the class itself that is hard but sometimes it can be the professor and there teaching style which I had experienced in Microeconomics this past second semester. The first few weeks of that class was just getting use to the concept of how the class is being runed which I had no problem with and after mid semester I had no changes with my situation as far as making progress in that class. I believe that If i did my research on my professor before picking the one I first was given I possibly could have done better. I heard mixed reviews of the professor and once I got warnings from other people who had similar experiences told me to not take her as a teacher and by then it was mid semester to end so it was to late for me. I had to humble myslef and try to stick the class out as best as possible. Thankfully my CODES classes and professors and advisors had my back on the situation, and it was a relief of stress to get off my back. Going further into my college career I will always make sure to look my professors up and ask other people who had taken them about their experiences. As always, my codes classes have been the positive and the highlight of my semesters. Partnering with MOBOT and the connections related to slavery is an interesting project and I am looking forward to working with them for the rest of my 3 years left in college. Overall, my freshman year was a learning experience, and it was pretty good. I am looking forward to years to come.